This year’s Big Astun Meet-up saw most (unfortunately not all) of the company come together in Birmingham. Our purpose? To discuss the Customer Experience and enjoy an early festive night out.
Astun and the Customer Experience
We do our best to deliver great customer service and service uptime but we’re only human. Mistakes can happen and it’s important to us that we learn from them without pointing the finger of blame. Having so many of us together gave us a great opportunity to collectively review what we’re doing right and where we feel we can improve.
The Meet-up also enabled us to review our plans for the User Group the following day. This included trying out some new A/V kit without the pressure of an audience (hats off to Elena for learning on the fly). We also had a crash course in iShare Mobile with QField, our new field data collection tool. This would enable us to support User Group delegates when they used it for the first time the next day.
Going out (not ‘out out’) with the team
After shooting back to our hotel for a quick wash and brush up (optional, of course), we headed out for a brisk walk across Birmingham via the impressive Great Western Arcade. Our destination was Clue HQ, an Escape Room and Board Game cafe in the Jewellery Quarter.
There we split into two groups, led by our two most experienced Escape Room attendees: Elena and Peter. Fortified by drinks and nibbles (the cheesy potato tots are to die for), and amused by several of the board game titles, we proceeded to tackle “The Betrayal of Cluetankhamun” and “Captain Riddle’s Forgotten Fortune”.
We’d love to say it was a close-fought battle, but we’d be lying. Elena’s team broke free with 16 minutes to go. Their sphinx-tacular performance made them the clear winners. We won’t reveal what happened with the other team, as they’re in de-Nile. Enough of the bad Egyptian puns? Pharaoh-nuff.
Back to the story. Here’s a fabulous picture of Elena and her team before they returned to the bar for celebratory drinks.
The Astun Christmas dinner
When the other team finally emerged (we won’t reveal how long it took but let’s say we got exceptional value for money), we took a more gentle stroll back to the centre of Birmingham for an early Christmas meal at Pieminister.
With a pie expert in our midst (Tom’s book on pies is available on Amazon), it was a nerve-wracking affair for the event organiser. Especially as she made the mistake of sitting opposite him and studying his body language before and after his pie consumption.
After pies and puds, we had a quick prizegiving ceremony for our Escapees before splitting up. Some of us headed back to the hotel to rehearse our User Group presentations in the privacy of our rooms. Others drew longer straws and popped to the pub next door for more teambuilding.
Our thanks go to our MD, Mike, and our clients for making this event possible.